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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

....Or you can just view the video on Youtube - Lola Astanova Fantaisie Impromptu.

Thanks -- I did it that way.

First of all I don't understand the big deal about the playing -- either way.

It's good. It's not bad. But very easily arguably it's not great either.

There's nothing extraordinary about it, either badly or goodly. (Provided we're judging it on a high professional level; for an amateur it would be terrific, but, at the same time, it can rightly be criticized for lacking some aspects of Chopin playing that many consider essential.)

About this thing, which was my main interest in hearing it:

Originally Posted by Mark_C

Originally Posted by pianoloverus

The variants in the middle section were interesting but not particularly Chopinesque IMO. (I hope someone doesn't now say that are some newly discovered variants by Chopin haha.)

I learned at one of the amateur Chopin competitions in Warsaw that there is at least one variant version. As I remember, it involved some differences in both the outer sections and the middle section. If I heard the thing that was posted here, I might or might not be able to tell if it's the same as the variant that I heard; I'd probably be able to say if it probably is or isn't.

It's not the same as the variant I heard, which seemed to be some fairly-recently-discovered thing and which diverted more from the usual version. This one is far closer to it.

The only differences I heard are two things, in the middle section (as Plover indicated) -- and they're things that may well be present in some long-known edition or at least in some variant that was somewhat commonly played in "the golden age."

How I've known that: I've heard at least the first of those two thingees in some old-old recordings -- and I may at some point have seen an edition that had it; not sure about that -- and after I heard it and maybe also saw it in an edition, I played it. I've never done it that way when anyone was listening ....not because I think it's bad taste or anything like that but because I've never worked on it that way and, just noodling it as I've done, I haven't been able to do it particularly well. It's been just for fun.

About the second of those thingees, I can tell you this: I don't specifically remember if I ever heard anything like it in old recordings or seen it in an edition, but, in fact, in the times that I've noodled that other thingee, I've also noodled this thingee, which makes me think I probably did hear it.

I'm guessing that her way of playing those things is an old known thing although it's probably rarely done nowadays. I'd guess that if we went through old-old recordings of the piece on youtube -- y'know, like, by people like Pachmann, Godowsky. Hofmann, Lhevinne, whomever -- we'd come across a recording or two where those thingees are played that way.

....I'd guess that if we went through old-old recordings of the piece on youtube -- y'know, like, by people like Pachmann, Godowsky. Hofmann, Lhevinne, whomever -- we'd come across a recording or two where those thingees are played that way.

On my first try, I found a recording of Josef Hofmann where he does the first thingee that way (more or less; not all the notes are necessarily the same), but not the second.

It's not a matter of her chops, she's not fluffing notes left and right like David Helfgott. She's so accurate that some in this thread were convinced it was midi. (My condolences to the hoax-sniffers )

I don't think there's anything she *can't* execute - sure she could do it exactly the way some particular person wants it done. They find fault because she's doing it the way she wants to do it. And apparently having a blast and looking dang fine too.

It's Lola Astanova - I believe it's the only full-length version of it she has on Youtube. After seeing prejudiced reactions to her based on factors other than her playing that I found on here in previous threads I was curious to see what the feedback would be in an anonymous setting. Some clearly have a real issue with her showing up looking like a Robert Palmer girl.

The only thing I did to it was add a touch of modeled reverb in SoundForge to give it more of a concert hall sound. The original audio has a distinctive, close-mic'd ambience that I thought might give it away if anyone was familiar with the video.

That is a rare achievement, sounding like a midi render. Too much technique, too little musicality, like I heard Lang Lang once say.

And I still think it's a midi render, at least a part of it, or a severe edited midi recording. And if it's not, I know now not to buy something from Lola. I was wrong about one thing though. I thought that if it wasn't a midi render, the pianist must be Chinese. I saw a documentary once about young Chinese pianists who took a master class from Lang Lang and some of them sounded like machines. There was even a pianist who didn't really want to become a pianist, but his parents hoped he would become famous, and then rich. Well, it's an incentive. And I do understand, because I'm not really a pianist, more a composer. My teacher could get very frustrated, because I never played a composition in one go. I stopped to explain to him how I would have written that piece. I still don't understand what's the fun in playing something another musician wrote

Wait, I saw a picture of her and now I understand all the fuss. She is beautiful and looks like a popstar. Right. Note to myself: Ignore her.

This just sounds utterly unremarkable to me. I can't criticise it, but I don't hear anything special either. Maybe I'll listen to it again and hear something amazing in it at some stage in the future. Sometimes it can take me a while to "get" a pianist.

This just sounds utterly unremarkable to me. I can't criticise it, but I don't hear anything special either. Maybe I'll listen to it again and hear something amazing in it at some stage in the future. Sometimes it can take me a while to "get" a pianist.

This just sounds utterly unremarkable to me. I can't criticise it, but I don't hear anything special either. Maybe I'll listen to it again and hear something amazing in it at some stage in the future. Sometimes it can take me a while to "get" a pianist.

I thought that if it wasn't a midi render, the pianist must be Chinese.

Originally Posted by Rowy van Hest

I still don't understand what's the fun in playing something another musician wrote

Originally Posted by Rowy van Hest

Wait, I saw a picture of her and now I understand all the fuss. She is beautiful and looks like a popstar. Right. Note to myself: Ignore her.

Originally Posted by Rowy van Hest

She wears pumps with high heels, so she must be very special.

Now be nice.

across the stone, deathless piano performances

"Discipline is more reliable than motivation." -by a contributor on Reddit r/piano"Success is 10% inspiration, and 90% perspiration." -by some other wise person"Pianoteq manages to keep it all together yet simultaneously also go in all directions; like a quantum particle entangled with an unknown and spooky parallel universe simply waiting to be discovered." -by Pete14

Among many others we could mention, there's also Da-Ming Zhu, who made the finals in the great field of the 1981 Cliburn competition despite having only been playing for a few years.BTW at the time his name was given as Zhu Da Ming. We over here have never been real good at necessarily knowing what's the "first" or "last" name of Asian people, or maybe more to the point, what's the family name and what's the given name. I'm often still unsure unless it's someone I know. And even though I now know how to write his name, I couldn't swear which name is which.(I think Zhu is the family name.)

Here he is playing a Mozart concerto, which is pretty far from any mechanical stereotype.BTW I didn't think the post was necessarily racist. I thought it was just dumb. Which doesn't mean the person who said it was dumb. At least I hope it doesn't. I've posted plenty of dumb things.

We over here have never been real good at necessarily knowing what's the "first" or "last" name of Asian people, or maybe more to the point, what's the family name and what's the given name. I'm often still unsure unless it's someone I know. And even though I now know how to write his name, I couldn't swear which name is which.(I think Zhu is the family name.)

Chinese names are often written with hyphenated names which link the "first" and "second" name, therefore the remaining name is the family name. In Chinese, the family name comes before the given names, but to make it less confusing for Westerners, they often write the family name last when writing in English .

Incidentally, the way it's spelled is a direct transliteration of the way it's pronounced in their native language - which means that the same name (when written in Mandarin) can be spelled differently depending on whether their native language is Cantonese (or another Chinese dialect) or Mandarin, because it's pronounced differently in different dialects.

Like Yin Cheng-Zong (or Yin Chengzong), who won joint second prize in the 2nd Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 (in which Ashkenazy shared first prize with Ogdon) - who incidentally wrote the piano part of the Yellow River Concerto. That's why the piano part is so pianistic and grateful for smaller hands - no stretches bigger than an octave .

"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."

Talking of Chinese names, I look forward to the day when Chinese pianos proudly display Chinese names instead of fake or defunct European ones. It didn't do Xiaomi or Huawei phones and computers any harm. I know that Hailun sell under their own name in some countries though. I've never seen a Yellow River piano. It might be an English language name, but it's still clearly Chinese.